As businesses face increasing pressures from market changes, technology and competition, transformation has become essential. Here’s how to successfully lead your organization through change.
Take a good look at any company today and chances are, there’s a transformation underway. Businesses are moving quickly to respond to market changes, while technological advancements are disrupting entire business processes and economic pressures are sparking operational improvements.
At the same time, regulatory changes are forcing companies to adapt, and globalization and increased competition further drive the need for transformation. If you’re not transforming, you’re falling behind.
But while everyone’s transforming, the goals of transformation are different for every organization. For some, it’s about leveraging new technology. For others, it’s about overhauling internal processes, culture or even how they manage their finances. At its core, transformation is a fundamental change in how a company does business, with a broad impact across multiple domains or C-level organizations.
# Implementing lasting change
Urgency and complexity elevate a transformation program from a normal portfolio backlog to a higher priority initiative requiring its own governance and leadership. These efforts require coordination across teams and functions.
But too often – 88 percent of the time, according to a 2023 Bain report – transformations do not achieve or exceed expected results. This is often because there’s no clear rationale, aligned sponsorship, adept operational leadership or effective change adoption.
A solid change management strategy ensures that the entire organization understands the ‘why’ behind the transformation.
To succeed in transformation, you will need more than just traditional project management. You will need a strategic approach that brings the whole organization along for the ride – from investors to executive sponsors and individual employees.
To truly transform, you need to set up the right foundation, with five critical elements that can help you kick-start an enterprise transformation and position it for success.
- Step One: Define the business case
- Step Two: Establish executive sponsorship
- Step Three: Design the operational model and governance
- Step Four: Bring the organization along
- Step Five: Bring the investors along and prove the value
Read the rest of the article with CEO Magazine.
